Fueling the War with Iran: The Unfolding Financial Reset

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: David McAlvany

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 3/25/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand in the Gap Today. And today it’s a special focus on the escalating war against Iran. Certainly if you’re listening to this program, you know that’s consuming the news of the day. But as I mentioned in yesterday’s program, there are multiple ways and perspectives by which one can approach commentary on what is happening there in the Middle East starting. Well, for instance, what is it that’s exactly happening? For instance, and I share this just to prove a point. The president just yesterday, while addressing the Republican congressional group that was gathered, said to them basically these exact words. I didn’t write down exactly, but it’s essentially it. They told me not to call this war with Iran, to not call it a war, because if I did, we’d have to get congressional approval. So it’s just an operation.

Well, that’s interesting. When terms of law, having been in the legislature, I can say when terms of law are so easily redefined according to pragmatism, really reality is quickly distorted. And that includes the reason for being at war, not just is it a war, but why are we there? The stated objectives of the war, the agreed to goalpost describing the end of the war. And while this war can be considered politically and most of what we hear is politically consideration, it can also be done prophetically. And I have done that in prior programs. But it also has a very, very real economic and financial implications with which touched on a perspective that we’re going to consider more in depth today. To help us do just that, I’ve invited back again, David McAlvany. David’s the CEO of the McAlvany Financial Group comprised of McAlvany Precious Metals and McAlvany Wealth Management.

He’s a graduate of Biola University and an associate member of Kemble College in Oxford. He’s also the author of the Intentional Legacy, a book about how faith, character, and thoughtful preparation shape both financial decisions and generational impact. And he regularly speaks on the connection between economics, stewardship, and values. The title I’ve chosen to frame today’s important conversation is this, Fueling the War with Iran, The Unfolding Financial Reset. Right. And with that, David, welcome to the program. Glad to have you back.

David McAlvany:

Sam, great to be back with you.

Sam Rohrer:

David, your background, again, your second time with us. A lot of our listeners don’t know a lot about you, so that’s why I gave a little bit more of an extensive bio there for you. But your background is financial. It includes wealth management and economics overall business. Mine, I spent 15 years in business and then over 20 years in elected office and was deeply involved in the political process. Now, one thing I learned from being in office that when it comes to politics, once it’s unhinged from biblical truth and a voluntary submission to God’s commandments, that greed, the lust for power and money, they ultimately drive all laws and public policy and spending. Now that’s what the word of God says too, but that’s what I saw and I think that’s what we can see. Around the globe for decades, I think governments have been run by bribery and corruption.

We see it all over, but I would say in the last 25 years or so, my observation has been that in America, we’ve given ground to the control of people who are driven by greed and lust and power. And now we sit as a nation at $39 trillion in debt, and that’s just government debt, not debt obligations due to promises made for programs like social security and Medicare and all of that. But all of this to me is evidence that bribery, greed, and corruption, not discipline, have taken over the reign of government, just like God described to Israel in Ezekiel chapter 22 versus 25 to 29. Now, that being said, David, when you personally, again, from your perspective, consider the driving motivations and the larger issues in play in this war that’s taking place in the Middle East. What would you identify as the true motivations for the United States and particularly where money, finances, and economics rank in those reasons?

Because I think there’s more than one reason why we’re there, but comment on this part.

David McAlvany:

Yeah. We’re witness to a shifting balance of power away from the United States and towards countries like China in particular. And as we look at sort of a block of anti-dollar countries, which Goldman Sachs coined the term BRICS, it’s an acronym, Brazil, Russia, India, China. We see the shift away from dollar hegemony and what we’ve grown accustomed to post 1971. The critical dates in US monetary history, 1933, 1944, 1971, and these are significant shifts in the way that we managed our monetary system and frankly influenced the global monetary system. And we came very close. 1968 to 1971, we became very close to losing our role in the world, and we solidified it once again by establishing something that was unique, frankly, ingenious, recycling the revenues from oil into US treasury obligations. So when we sent Andry Kissinger over to the Middle East and his addicts over to the Middle East, we negotiated a sweetheart deal.

It put a floor into the US dollar and created global demand for dollars, created global demand for US treasuries. That Sam is what we’re seeing eroded today, confidence in the treasury market and in the US dollar. And so I think if you view what’s happening as something of a chess board, you can see where the decisions that are being made are to change the pressure points on the board. And Venezuela and Iran are very critical in this process. Venezuela is the largest reserves of oil in the world with over 300 billion barrels, roughly 18 to 19% of global reserves. Iran is number three right behind Saudi Arabia. Iran has 200 billion barrels. We are today the largest producer of oil in the United States, but our reserves are a fraction of those. We rank at number eight with around 83 billion barrels. So if we want to see a healthy economy and grow our economy, certainly oil production and gas production has been super helpful, does provide something of an insulation in terms of recessionary pressures, but we don’t have an infinite supply.

And I think as you look at who has tried to gain influence and control over the number one and number three holder of reserves, Venezuela has been under the thumb of the Chinese for a long time, and Iran obviously has a close partnership with both Russia and China. And so we are in essence displacing Chinese influence in these critical geographies as we try to maintain our position or change the pressure points on the global chess board.

Sam Rohrer:

All right. You put an awful lot of good information in there, David. Thank you for that, ladies and gentlemen. Hope you get that combination of what’s happening here because there is an economic component of what’s taking place. We’ll talk more about that in detail, hopefully fill in the blanks more as we go through this program. But money, economics, the dollar, oil, Iran, the Middle East and all of that, it’s all wrapped up, not generally being the discussion and what’s being reported, but we’re trying to combine some of those things further to go through the program. We’ll come back. We’re going to talk about the consequences of a dollar that’s not linked to oil. Well, if you’re just joining us, we’re at the beginning of the program. Our focus today is this Fueling the War with Iran, the Unfolding Financial Reset. And this is an approach of taking a look at what’s taking place right now, because it’s in the headline, the whole effort going on in the Middle East.

My special guest helping to walk through this with me is David McAlvany. He’s the CEO of the McAlvany Financial Group. They have a website at McAlvany. It’s M-C-A-L-V-A-N-Y McAlvany.com. And if you add to that a backslash stand in the gap, they have a page there that can be of particular benefit and made for those of you listening to the program. I’ll give that again, but it’s mcAlvany.com/stand in the gap if you want to pursue that. All right. Now, David, we talked a little bit in that last segment. You gave a little bit of a history of the dollar and all that, and I’m going to give you just a little bit more here to fill in, and then we’re going to go to this idea of consequences of the dollar when it’s not linked to oil. Now, ladies and gentlemen, many of you listen to this may know the history, and I’m not giving all of it, just some slices of it, and David can fill in like he did in the beginning in the first segment.

But in 1944, this was obviously at the end of the war, during the end of World War II, there was a Bretton Woods agreement. It’s called, I’m not going to win the detail what that is, but the US dollar at that point was pegged to gold at $35 an ounce. And this arrangement following World War II where, well, you could say to the victor goes the spoils, we were the winner that came out of World War II. We were the victor. And with that came certain benefits, one of which allowed the US dollar to be made called the reserve currency, and that happened there in 1944. But then in 1971, under President Richard Nixon, the US dollar was decoupled from the gold standard, which it was linked at that point, and the result of that was it introduced a global, since it was reserve currents, the dollar became a global fiat currency, paper money linked to nothing.

Okay? This move began then to threaten the viability of the US dollar with people around the world saying, “Wait a minute, your dollar’s not linked to anything.” No credibility. So around that same time, Henry Kissinger then delivered on the idea and worked a deal with OPEC, the oil producing, exporting countries of the world, OPEC nations, which were at that time, there’s five of them, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and yes, Iran. And during 1973, 74 timeframes, when I was put together, the US negotiated a series of agreements with Saudi Arabia, was kind of the lead entity over there in oil production, requiring Saudi Arabia to sell oil in US dollars in return for the United States granting and guaranteeing military protection. For the Saudis in exchange, they were going to help force the other oil producing nations to do the same thing, sell only in dollars.

Now in time, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein refused and wanted to sell something other than US dollars and then ultimately under other pretenses, but I think at the end of the day it was because, and that’s why the US went to war against Iraq. Libya’s Mamara Kadafi resisted and under the Clinton administration, they killed him. Now, for years, Iran has resisted and is now selling oil to other countries, as we speak, in currency other than dollars. And we also happen to have a war that I would submit that at least in part is because the strength of the dollar as fiat money and the reserve currency is being seriously threatened. All right, now those some of my concepts in there. David, I’ve given a bit of a history in addition to what you were saying, but because of all of this, now we are at a point where the dollars link to oil, you’ve said that, I’m just repeating it.

Most people listening know that, but Iran is now selling to Chinese, in particular Chinese won and maybe other currencies. All right, we get an issue from a economic perspective as it relates to the dollar. So start here, if you will. How has the US benefited by having our dollar linked to the sale of oil and the US dollar being the reserve currency of the world? Just establish that first.

David McAlvany:

Yeah. The biggest benefit is that it forces holdings of dollars into every economy and every banking system around the world. If you have to settle your trade, and of course every economy in the world is vitally dependent on oil and gas just to operate. And so if you have to settle those transactions in US dollars, it forces holding of US dollars both as reserves and for the purpose of trade settlement. And so this massive shift that is underway, de- dollarization, this really marks the end of the petrodollar era. And what you suggested with Mo Markadafi, with Saddam Hussein, what we’ve seen with Iran, this is a sort of repudiation of what was in place, what Saudi Arabia agreed to, and still adheres to a degree. So the implications are pretty significant because when you look at the value of the dollar, it is stable in light of happy holders.

If you run out of happy holders and there’s less demand for the dollar, you will see a lower value in the currency. What is the net effect for a US consumer? It means the cost of goods goes higher. It means that in this de-dollarization period, we essentially have an upward bias for inflation and ultimately that results in an upward bias for interest rates as well. And as you mentioned in the first segment, we’ve reached 39 trillion in debt. This is an upward bias we simply can’t afford. So the interest component on the national debt now exceeds 20% of all tax revenue, which is absolutely insane and marching higher, assuming that we have higher inflation, which is to be expected in this period of dollarization and of course higher interest rates.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. And with that, I mean, when everybody needs our dollar and it’s linked to oil, so that keeps a flow of dollars going, when those Middle Eastern countries, Arab countries, the oil producing countries in particular, when they have made their trillions of dollars off of the oil, you referred to it, but just so people understand, what did they do with that money that helped us here?

David McAlvany:

Well, rather than take dollar proceeds and invest it into the local economy, which would drive up the value of their currency and create an economy that’s frankly too hot to be managed, they recycle those dollar proceeds into US debt obligations. They’re essentially financing our over consumption. So when the government like this year is going to run a $1.9 trillion deficit, we have to have somebody fund that deficit. They have to loan us the money. Those IOUs we refer to as treasury bills, bonds, and notes. And so this is where the petrodollar recycling system has been so critical and enabled us to live beyond our means for so many years. So you are talking about a radically different mode of operation if we don’t have someone who’s voluntarily funding our deficits and the petrodollar system was very elegant in providing the flow of money back into treasuries.

Again, as you said, it’s the proceeds from oil sales and gas sales that get put right back into the US treasury market and that keeps the dollar strong and also keeps us funded beyond what we actually can produce in our economy. So

Sam Rohrer:

The

David McAlvany:

Spending has been a part of our game and that too is going to come under a real pressure.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. I want you to build out on that because not only the oil slowed down by Iran preventing oil going out of the Gulf, those countries there, those OPEC producing nations won’t have revenues to put back into us, so obviously a problem, but there are other major people upon which have financed our debt for a long time. Japan, China, they’ve been cutting back on investing, buying treasury bonds, so the dollar is already under significant pressure. What’s happening with the oil really just fuels the problem, right? Yeah,

David McAlvany:

This is a structural shift and you’re right, the bias to move away from the dollar has been there for a good five to 10 years, but it’s been with folks like China in particular who once had 1.3, $1.4 trillion in their reserves and it’s now down to about 600 billion US dollar assets. They’re curbing it back at the same time. They’re adding to gold positions as a way of sort of insulating from US dollar exposure. And you’re right, this is an interesting dynamic with countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, who don’t have the ability like the Saudis do to redirect flows and they simply cannot bring their products to market. The East West pipeline is a workaround for Saudi Arabia. They can move product to the Red Sea and it does not have to go around the strait of Hormuz, but there’s a bunch of other countries that have product that’s now locked in and they can’t bring to market.

We’re looking at a couple of those countries now looking at GDP declines this year of between 10 and 15%, which means they’ve got to sell gold reserves, they’ve got to sell other reserves just to pay the bills because they don’t have any revenue coming in at present. They can’t deliver product to market. All

Sam Rohrer:

Right. Well, we don’t have just put a few seconds left in a second. We may carry it over, but the impact, I want to just identify some of the consequences to us as a nation. If the oil doesn’t flow, if these nations in Middle East, if Iran is successful and can break up the obligation of the OPEC nations to buy in dollars, and Japan and China continue to refuse to buy our dollars, what happens? You can answer this when we come back. And then because this is global and you’re talking about GDP reductions, consequences global, I’m going to ask you those two questions to us and then globally. And ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. We’ll be back in just a moment. Our theme today is fueling the war with Iran, the unfolding financial reset. We’re talking about the impacts of dollar and oil and what’s happening, and we’re going to conclude in the end with financial reset and what that may or may not mean.

All right. As we continue in the program today, we’re looking at financial, economic aspects of the war. Obviously, we’re hearing much about what’s happening oil. Things are happening already all around the world because the flow of oil has been … Well, some degrees, most of the Western world almost totally curtailed. Some still getting out and going to China and so forth, those who have a relationship with Iran, but these are factors we’ve connected to why are we there? Why is the war really going on? And we’ve talked about in other programs, how in reality, depending upon who is the one speaking on behalf of the administration, why were there changes, how long were going to be there changes, and all of that. And at the end of the day, I’ve suggested that there’s an economic aspect that is very, very strong, and that is part of what we’re talking about today.

And that is the fact that Iran says we don’t want to sell our oil anymore in dollars. We want to sell it in other currencies and that impacts what’s happening. Now, David, in addition to what we’re talking about, and I’m going to have you answer those two questions, consequences as a result of oil being separated from the dollar to the United States, what that means, and globally, since everything is connected. I want to throw in this some information here as well, and then have you respond to it altogether. Because from a financial perspective, ladies and gentlemen, I mean, just think about it. War is always expensive. War is expensive. According to the Pentagon, the war in Iran that we’re talking about now, the first six days cost $11.3 billion. Estimates are that the war is costing $1 billion a day ongoing. So at that rate thus far, the war has cost the American taxpayer about $30 billion.

The White House has urged, demanded, and an additional $200 billion for emergency military hardware because of so much usage of missiles and equipment. Now, all of that is just added to our now $39 trillion national debt, because we don’t have the money. And with the disrupted flow and oil, economic impacts are increasing here and around the world, and it brings up the question, how long can we continue to spend and spend and add more and more to our debt? What are the likely financial and economic implications? So David, from your perspective, put some of that together because we’ve been on a spending binge for a long time, regardless of Democrat or Republican administration. It’s been an easy thing to do because we can print money because it’s fiat, not really connected to anything. And the only way that we’ve benefited, as you’ve just said, is that other nations buy our debt and the oil aspect from OPEC has been a lever that we’ve had a benefit that probably no nation in history, the world has ever had in this sort, but now that is being threatened.

So let’s go back on this. If there is a day linkage or there is a moving away at all from nations having to buy oil, energy in dollars as what’s taking place now, what are some of those consequences to us here and globally from a financial and economic perspective?

David McAlvany:

Yeah. Let’s start with here in the US. I think one of the biggest consequences for your listeners, if they’re thinking about dollar devaluation, obviously goods and services go up in terms of costs. So those inflationary impacts can change consumer behavior and that is very consequential for sort of recessionary possibilities on the horizon. But dollar devaluation also has another impact. And that is, as your listeners consider the value of their 401ks, the retirement assets and investments like that, dollar debit devaluation is very important for the US stock market because roughly one third of the value of all stocks in the US are owned by foreigners and they need to not only make money on their money, but as they translate those gains back into their currency, if they end up losing the gains because of dollar devaluation, there’s much less motivation to be investing in US equities.

So you could have up to one third of the total stock market capitalization evaporate, just because they don’t want to continue to invest. They don’t want to put more money into the US. So there is some vulnerability in the US equities market in the context of dollar devaluation, and of course, the inflationary consequences as well. Thinking of global consequences, I think this is very critical. The difference between the markets we’re talking about with oil and gas. Frankly, there’s more of a crisis with natural gas than there is oil. It doesn’t get much press because frankly, we haven’t seen much of a move in price. In the US, the increase in natural gas pricing has been roughly 7% from the pre-crisis or pre-Iran … What did you describe it earlier as? It’s an operation, it’s not a war. So prior to this operation, now we have a 7% increase in natural gas prices, but if you go to Asia, it’s been as high as 143%, and in Europe, 85%.

They don’t produce it. We have to send it over and it has to be converted to liquid natural gas to be moved on boats and provide a source of electricity and energy generation for them. So frankly, the recessionary possibilities are far greater in Asia and in Europe, as they’re dealing with natural gas pricing, which is through the roof. 15% of global LNG came from Qatar and there is zero coming from that point from Qatar currently, and they assume that it’s going to take between three and five years to restore. And if we ended the conflict today, it would take them another three to five years to restore supplies. So global recession, those probabilities are ratcheting higher. The US is somewhat insulated because we have better pricing, so physical availability, not a problem for us here in the US. We have plenty of oil, plenty of gas, we are a net exporter, and we can use our $3 natural gas while Asia is currently paying $20 and Europe is paying $18.54.

So a dramatic price differential, huge difference in terms of recessionary tendencies. I think that the pricing increase for us, certainly at the pump, this is where you begin to see US consumers change their behavior. If we get the national average well above $4 a gallon, you begin to see people very concerned. They change their consumption patterns. They tighten their belts considerably. They have to cut back in other places, and if we have this last three, four more weeks, you are talking about greater probabilities of recession here in the US as well. Not a primary concern today, very much an acute concern if you’re talking about Asia and Europe, but if this extends, if the duration continues, then we could have recessionary problems here in the US as well.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. Now around the world, China, Taiwan only has, I believe, 10 days worth of natural gas left. They’re not getting anything that goes to the point that you are talking about, but they also make all the chips that we buy and they have to have helium that comes from that in order to make it happen and they’re not getting it. So they are on a rationing effort. China’s already rationing. Australia is rationing. So here would be my question in the last few minutes in this segment. Even though the United States has oil, and even though we have natural gas, but because we are so interconnected with supply chains and all of that, is it possible that a summer suggestion, well, we don’t really care what happens to the rest of the world. We are in good shape. Can we actually make it without a healthy rest of the world?

David McAlvany:

Yeah. I mean, I think we’re in better shape, but even if you look at sort of equity market performance, the S&P 500, two fifths of the profits for the S&P 500 come from overseas. So if you have a recession globally, it will end up impacting the revenue for your largest companies, your multinational corporations, with huge footprint and revenue streams coming back to the US from overseas. So I think we’re in better shape, and that I think is even illustrated by the differential between Brent crude, which is the price paid for in the global markets, which is roughly 108 versus the West Texas intermediate priced today at $94. There’s a 14 and a half percent difference, and yes, 94 is high. It’s a lot higher than where we started this conflict, closer to 60. And so yes, it’s impactful. We are better by 14.5%, even in terms of what we’re paying at the pump.

And so, I think it’s a difference in lag where you could see global recession by the middle of this year and US recession by the end of the year, and I think this is dawning on the Trump administration. If this does not end quickly, he’s dealing with a midterm crisis where all of a sudden what he thought was going to be very easy, just like he marched into Venezuela and marched right back out, and it was a short term conflict. If this extends, if he was wrong about the timeframe in this commitment, then I think this is where he will get desperate. He will get very desperate realizing the stakes in the midterm election.

Sam Rohrer:

And I’m sensing, David, that that’s already happening because you did not mention it, could have, but we are impacted by the fact that we use a lot of fertilizer and so does the world, and that comes right out in the … And we’re in planting season in the agricultural community. That is a major, major concern here already in America. So that is one that our own oil can’t fix, right? Yeah.

David McAlvany:

And I mean, when you look at the fertilizer complex, there’s different products that go in and urea is is the primary one that’s coming from the Middle East and those supplies are constrained. So that can certainly have an impact, but there’s other fertilizers that we do have access to and with huge supplies coming from Canada. So again, when you look at grain prices, we would have seen a much more significant spike if that was a true issue for us in the immediate.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. All right. With that, Dave, we’ll have to stop just because we’re out of time. Ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. We’re going to come back and we’re going to conclude the discussion that we’ve been having and look at this concept of what may happen. It’s called a digital reset. Well, as we continue into the final segment, again, if you were not able to join us perhaps right at the beginning, my guest today is David McWilvaney. Been with me a couple of times now on this program. It’s the CEO of the McAlvany Financial Group, and they deal with wealth management, precious metals, and more. And they have a website that you can find out more if anything in that is interesting to you. And it could very well be, it should be. McAlvany.com. That’s M-C-A-L-V-A-N-Y, McAlvany.com. Then if you go back/stand in the gap, you’ll go to a page that they have set up where there’s an offering there anyways that’s made for those who would be listening to the program.

All right. Now, that being the case, the impacts, everything we’re talking about, and I guess we’re giving details, but still an overview relative to the financial driving component of what’s taking place in the Middle East with Iran and we’ve made the connection. Iran, OPEC, dollar, oil, reserve currency, those nations and OPEC, along with countries like Japan and China have been buying our debt. They have been financing our $39 trillion debt, which they’re not buying it as much anymore. And if oil were to stop, those countries in the Middle East could not finance. We would be in big trouble. And so anyways, I’m just summarizing briefly some of those things that are happening. The world is connected. So that’s why David just a little bit ago talked about impacts, consequences to us here, but also around the world. And by the fact that we’re all so connected, you cannot have the rest of the world being egregiously impacted by a shutoff of oil and us not feel the impact.

We just may not feel it quite as much, but anyway, so we’ll just leave it at that. But during the COVID military operation, which it was, and now that’s been recognized, and the president referred to it as a military operation himself, the self-appointed global elite that are represented in the world economic forum in particular made clear at that time that COVID was the first, was an experimental effort to impose a global reset on a frightened population. That whole thing did not happen by accident, and I think you all know that. But they also said that what was next was a financially driven, great reset, where the former president of WEF, Klaus Schwab, stated the co-president now of World Economic Form is BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, but he’s also confirmed what was said, and it was effectively that we would reach a point financially where we would own nothing and be happy.

Larry Fink has made clear and did that fairly recently with an affirmation of that point, but within our own US government, there is discussion of our own people, but Fink talked about the move to tokenize, as he called it, every asset, including every tree, every piece of ground, a property, every natural resource that lies under the ground, which then would become an asset quote, unquote, that they happen to control, and then they would dole out to citizens in some form and they’ve talked about a universal income for all. How could they do that? Well, you come up with some new monetary system as a result of a reset, and it’s all digital. So I just comprised a little bit. David, we don’t have time to address all this digital reset in any substantive way, so maybe we can pick it up in a future program, but nonetheless, could you comment on the digital reset direction as you see it and how soon, how realistic?

And could the current impact resulting from that ran war and the stopping of the flow of oil and all that be a catalyst that might just justify this coming reset? What are your thoughts?

David McAlvany:

Yeah. I mean, I think we see within the world of digital currencies, a popularization and clearly expression of speculative interest by individual investors. Let’s make money on Bitcoin. Let’s make money on Ethereum. And in theory, these are things that could eventually be a part of a digital reset in a positive way. And as people are making money in those assets, they are positively inclined. There is no central bank in the world who is interested in Bitcoin or Ethereum taking away the monopoly power that they have in the creation of money. That will never happen. Now, on the other hand, you look at the Bank of International Settlements, which is the central bank to all central banks. And then the number of studies that have been done by the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and they are all interested in central bank digital currencies.

And so if it’s something that they can control, then they have a new tool, and it is a tool to track where you spend your money, when you spend your money, to what degree you are spending your money. And in that form, it does give them the opportunity to even coerce spending when you might be positively inclined to tighten your belt and save. And that’s sort of a Keynesian notion of getting money off the sidelines and getting every dollar, every currency unit, churning through the economy. So there is a great temptation here. As we look at sort of the dollarization that we were describing earlier, as we look at a loss of confidence in the US dollar, for there to be this sort of convenient pivot away from a Fiat currency system in the direction of a digital currency system. And again, I would say this emphatically, this has nothing to do with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Solana, all of these very popular speculative trades within the cryptocurrency universe.

Central banks will not release or relinquish their control on the creation of money, but they do intend to implement a digital currency alternative, and it helps them, in their view, not mine, that it helps them control the economy through a combination of

Big data, being able to run algorithms and see where you spend, they can create for you sort of the fallacy of false alternative. Rather than having the whole universe of things to spend money on, maybe they have preferred vendors, maybe they have politically directed capital flows where they want you to spend money on something like plant-based proteins instead of animal proteins. I mean, I don’t know what the prerogative would be at the time, but if they can incentivize you by having less purchasing power on one place and more purchasing power in another, they can create these economic incentives through a digital currency unit. So where are you going to spend? They’d like to have a say. When you’re going to spend, they’d like to have a say. To what degree you’re going to spend, they’d like to have a say. Let’s put a sell by date on all of your savings.

Do you really want to sit there with savings in a bank when you know that it will lose value if you don’t spend it fast enough? These are benefits and control levers that come with sort of a reset, particularly within the currency world, away from a Fiat paper currency in the direction of digital. There’s a lot more we could talk about there, but it’s the beauty in their view is that crisis is opportunity, and I think that’s a quote from the old mayor of Chicago, but crisis is opportunity because with every crisis comes a ratchet in control and central bank digital currencies certainly provide something that has become more palatable as Bitcoin and Ethereum have popularized the idea of digital currencies, but this is sort of a wolf in sheep’s clothing in my view.

Sam Rohrer:

All right. And David, we only have 30 seconds left, so don’t have time to really go into any other thing as well, because we’ll just have to stop at this point. But I’d like to be able to pick up this discussion that we’re having now, particularly in this matter of the digital move, because the other day I just spent time on the program talking about all of the tremendous monies that are being put into the data centers and the move to digital. Yesterday had Twila Brase on with me and we’re talking about how the digital push in the data centers that are being done here is to link together all aspects of healthcare, but then that connects to the monetary and all of that, what you’re describing all comes together. And ladies and gentlemen, if you don’t respond to that as total government control, then we’ve not communicated too well in the program.

That’s where it’s headed, and these are things that are all part and parcel of what’s happening, even right now in the Middle East with the dollar and oil and all things related to that. David McAlvany, thank you so much for being with me today. What a pleasure. Again, his website, maculvaney.com. And then if you go back/stand in the gap, that’ll be there for Stand in the Gap today, listeners. See you back here tomorrow.